“To Mr. Director of the Higher Education Courses for Women”: Materials for the Biography of V. N. Bunina and her Fellow Students (1900–1908)

This article introduces previously unstudied documents from the personal files of V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina and her three fellow students, i.e. Yu. M. Gefter, R. V. Obolenskaya, and N. K. Solodovnikova (additionally, the article considers the summary table of graduates of the historical, mathematical, and natural sciences departments between 1904 and 1918) kept in the Fund of Moscow Higher Education Courses for Women of W. I. Guerrier in the Central State Archive of Moscow. The documents published are interesting primarily because they reflect an important episode of Muromtseva’s early biography (echoes of which are briefly recorded only in her later diaries and correspondence) and have not appeared in print, but also because they serve to some extent, like other similar documents, as personal characteristics of those associated with their emergence. In addition, these biographical materials belong to the most active and productive period in the history of Higher Education Courses for Women, specifically to the 1900s. It was in these years that having resumed their activity after long-term reforms and transformations, the Higher Education Courses for Women for many years strengthened their leading position in the field of female education in the Russian Empire, justifying their legal status of a “higher educational institution” by a high level of educational curricula and impeccable teaching staff. Information about the views, interests, preferences and, of course, about the social situation, descent, and education of the people this article relates of are of peculiar but no less important nature.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC

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